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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27988080">Speak what we feel (not what we ought to say)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/id_ten_it/pseuds/id_ten_it'>id_ten_it</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Inktober [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Singin' in the Rain (1952)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cosmo's Symphony, Inktober, Inktober 2020, Multi, References to Shakespeare</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:49:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,551</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27988080</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/id_ten_it/pseuds/id_ten_it</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Our favourite OT3 on getting together, hiding in plain sight, and taking the silver screen by storm.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cosmo Brown/Don Lockwood, Cosmo Brown/Don Lockwood/Kathy Selden, Don Lockwood/Kathy Selden</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Inktober [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2003845</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>60</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Speak what we feel (not what we ought to say)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is for Inktober prompt nr 5 (toast) from the alternative Inktober pompt list found <a href="https://vkelleyart.tumblr.com/post/630712063324504064/we-are-doing-this-thing-yall-so-it-was">here</a>,  with thanks for the originator for doing the hard yards and providing a better alternative to the original.</p><p>Title from the Bard himself, because we all know that what Kathy wants Kathy is going to get (and Cosmo as the funny fool is just ideal).</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Cosmo yawned, stretched, and rolled his shoulder more securely into his partner. “This’s good” he murmured, dozing and already dreaming of continuing this forever. His normally athletic limbs were still, his normally expressive face slack and restful, his papery eyelids hiding his normally curious eyes. The whole effect was to compress him and give Don the overwhelming urge to cuddle him. Rumbling agreement he curled Cos close, covered them with the soft movie-star blanket, and went to sleep.</p><p>***</p><p>Don obediently handed Lina into her waiting car, blowing her a kiss and turning for his own ride. Right on cue the unhealthy rattling of Cosmo’s shocking vehicle clawed through the night. Hastily – lest a waiting fan hear the tell-tale signs of escape – Don leapt into the passenger seat and gestured in a vain hope this would help the poor car move more quickly. He’d offered to help Cos buy a new car at one stage. Only once. The cold glare had cut through his warm offer like a hot knife through butter, and he never asked again. For an unashamed sponge, Cosmo was fiercely independent.</p><p>***</p><p>“They’re asking again” Cos greeted him one morning, halfway through a plate of all of Don’s bacon and eggs, and most of the way through a fan magazine.<br/>
“How can they possibly be asking again? They’re supposed to think Lina and I-”<br/>
“They think you and Kathy-”<br/>
“I wish.” Don sat heavily, morosely sipping Cosmo’s coffee and missing the shutters drop on that normally expressive face. “She’s pretty wonderful, Cos.”<br/>
“I know. I’ve heard nothing else.”<br/>
“Aww don’t be like that. She’s not as wonderful as you.”<br/>
<em>You can marry her</em> Cos thought, taking back his mug <em>you can be with her, and it won’t be a problem. </em>“Nobody’s as wonderful as me, pal.” Grinning, Cos jumped up to soft-shoe between the coffee pot and toaster. He was still singing when Don stole the remains of his breakfast. “Hey! Give that here!” Things swiftly dissolved into a scuffle, and from there to sitting entwined feeding each other breakfast. Cos knew things couldn’t stay the same now, and he tried to supress the cold steel of betrayal. Still, Don didn’t seem to love him any <em>less</em>, and he could be very persuasive.</p><p>***</p><p>Kathy was pretty wonderful, Cos had to admit, gently stroking her hair back from her forehead and letting her cuddle close. She should be shocked, disgusted, insulted at Don’s behaviour but instead she had firmly stated some ground rules (and more home truths) and made it very clear that she expected Cosmo to do his own seduction. Luckily his patented blend of cheek and charm had worked, and now – months later – they were certain their bond was as strong as the other two in their happy little triangle.<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>“Still awake?” Don whispered as he came in from a late work dinner, “want me to get the manuscript?”<br/>
“Thinking about us” Cos replied, gently freeing one hand from Kathy to push the covers back for Don. Don wriggled out of his suit with alacrity, gently easing into bed and accepting the aborted hug with a fond kiss. “Yeah?”<br/>
“Yeah.” Don waited for more and though his partner hadn’t intended to, he found himself speaking again. “Seems like this could work for a long time. Seems we could be onto something.”<br/>
Don nodded, unusually quiet, biting his lip in the same way he had before kissing Cos for the first time. Now, as then, Cosmo waited for the verdict. “I don’t ever want to have to chose between you, Cos” Don began, earnest and vulnerable like he never was in public, “but at some stage people will expect a wedding and all those legal things. That’s going to make it look like I <em>am</em> choosing.”<br/>
“You have to get married” the musician pointed out as to a dense child, “otherwise we are all liable to unwelcome speculation.” At Don’s move to continue speaking, Cos added smugly, “besides, I might choose her over you. Divorces are easy to get in Hollywood.”<br/>
“I don’t deserve you.” Don muttered, eyes wide with wonder, “I really don’t.”<br/>
“Mind you remember it, buddy. I expect breakfast in the morning, eggs over easy, coffee, hold the tomatoes.” But Cos still caressed his partner’s jaw like it was a piece of precious glass, and when Kathy woke in the morning she was not alone in watching the golden light pick out every highlight in Don’s chiselled features.</p><p>***</p><p>The marriage was opulent, there was no getting around it. Kathy had tried to snare Cosmo to walk her up the aisle and stand by her side, but in the end tradition won and he stood by Don’s side instead, handing over the rings and grinning to himself when Kathy planted her first kiss as a married woman on the best man’s lips. The public were expecting a long honeymoon but they had miraculously found films to work on in the near future which gave the happy couple a reasonable excuse to stay at home with Cosmo instead. Not that the public knew that Cosmo was there, or that he wore a ring that matched the other two now. So they had their honeymoon without the press knowing or caring, and they were as deliriously happy as any new marriage should be.</p><p>When Don was at the set, Cos and Kathy headed off on a picnic together and returned pink-cheeked and laughing. When Cosmo was furiously re-writing an entire soundtrack so it ‘feels right’ and ‘pops’ – and no the orchestra has no idea what that means either – Kathy and Don went for a swim and Kathy stays in her bikini on the way home because both of them want Cosmo to see it too.<br/>
When Kathy was called in for line work, Don and Cos toy with the idea of never getting up, then decide to mark their own moment with a surprisingly tame drive in the country that gets more exciting when Cosmo precedes it with talking a dealer into giving him a new car to take for a spin. They test it thoroughly, decide it is not as comfortable as the old one – though the engine is more reliable – and return it hours later.</p><p>A few weeks later Don and Kathy host their first post-marriage party and Cosmo is somehow talked into that, too, so it is sort of official but nobody has the stupidity to ask.</p><p>***</p><p>Kathy stood at the kitchen bench, nursing her coffee, and wondering when this had all become so normal. The change from struggling, ambitious, dancer to on-screen Shakespearean actress was so sudden that if she stopped and thought about it for too long she would get whiplash.</p><p>She’d have preferred to do this with Don, of course, but he had been relegated to a character part to give the newest male star a chance. Given his upcoming King Lear, Don wasn’t particularly concerned. Still, filming without Don as her partner was a small price to pay for Rosalind, and Cordelia was hers as well.</p><p>Just as things were threatening to get morbid, Cosmo danced in, pecked her on the cheek, and fiddled three different themes at her. Selecting the middle one – the only one that had made her really grin – he danced out again, fiddling a variation. She assumed it was for a movie and had almost forgotten it when they were listening to his second symphony a few months later and the Rondo tickled at the memory. Her Rondo. When she took his hand and squeezed, he looked at her as though she had hung the stars. He’d looked at Don the same way in the scherzo and Don had chuckled back, sliding his hand under the coat jacket on his lap so that Kathy just knew they were holding hands.</p><p>That night, once they’d returned from the theatre, Cosmo held Don’s hands close as he started to remove the musician’s jacket. “I…I can’t…”<br/>
“You already did, Cos.” Don reassured him, flawlessly humming the tender theme of his second movement, “none of us are exactly great at words.”<br/>
“’cept for Kathy”<br/>
“Perhaps” she smiled, hugging him from behind and staying quiet so Don could speak.<br/>
“It was wonderful” was all he said, but he held Cosmo’s gaze as he did and she felt the anxiety leach out of the smaller man just before he gave a wet laugh and mimed throwing kisses to the crowd like Don had all those years ago. “I’ll just act out my thanks” he parroted.<br/>
Don swatted him, and then the two of them were tussling, Kathy forgotten for a moment before they both turned and dragged her in, until they were groaning instead of laughing. Yes, she thought, eagerly following their lead, it should take some getting used to, but there was nowhere she’d rather be. And even if nobody else could know, they had Don’s work, and her words, and Cosmo’s love songs, and soon the world would see them dance together and they’d know. But nobody would be silly enough to ask. They’d dance and sing and act their love straight into film history, and perhaps when it didn’t matter, someone would understand and write about it. In the meantime, they had each other and that was more than enough.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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